Six St Laurence’s Parish School students combined their talents yesterday to produce a children's book, in just 12 hours. The local school joined the “write a book in a day” challenge, a fundraiser for The Kids Cancer Project, producing a story that will be distributed to children’s hospitals. An excited team of Year 5 and 6 students met at St Laurence’s on Thursday for an 8am start – and sent off their completed book electronically at two minutes to 8pm that night. Project coordinator Leonie Burton said the early start was no problem, a couple of the students woke well before dawn with excitement. Schools were only delivered the parameters for their book the night before writing, so the young team arrived on Thursday morning to an interesting challenge. Their story was to be set at a music festival and include a handyman, a yoga instructor and a possum. The key issue for the plot was sharing a room. The final part of the challenge was for students to weave the words silver, patch, struggle, clock and prickly in to their 2000 to 2500-word story. With support from the school community and the motivation of writing a story that would brighten the day of children in hospital, they got stuck into it. Students started with a brainstorming session, then divided up to write, edit and illustrate sections of their story, Mrs Burton said. It was a huge effort for the young team, who on Friday described their day as fun and tiring. They met the deadline with moral and technical support, along with some pizza. Combining all the required factors was tricky, the young authors conceded. We can’t reveal too much about their book until after the judging, but the students were justifiably proud of their efforts. They’ve put a little bit of everything, in terms of fun and tension, into the story and hope that it is much enjoyed by young people who have to be in hospital for medical treatment.